Cooking

Like I said before, I’ve been making a lot Asian-style foods lately. Part of that involves recreating Asian-American standards. Many of the more common dishes that people think of when they’re considering Chinese are loaded with sugar in one form or another. I’m not big on sweets, so making these dishes at home has allowed me to dial back the sugar, carbs, and calories. Here’s the version of lettuce wrap chicken that I’ve been making lately.
Chicken Lettuce...

This is one of the easier sauces to make. Plus, it’s a great way to get rid of some garden produce. All you need is a cutting board, and knife, and a bowl. Mix everything together and keep the sauce in the fridge. It’s fine to serve immediately, but it’s even better the next day.
Homemade Tzatziki Sauce
6 oz Greek yogurt (Fage, 0%)
6 oz sour cream
½ red bell pepper, diced
½ garden cucumber, peeled and diced
½ red onion, diced
½ lemon, juiced
3...

Labor Day is usually a good time for BBQ, but I recently cooked some pulled pork and ribs. I simply didn’t have the urge to make BBQ again so soon. I also recently made hamburgers, hot dogs, and Chicago-style deep dish pizza, so those American standards were out too. I wanted to cook something different.
There’s a popular dish throughout the Balkans that’s similar to gyros called cevapi (or ćevapčići). It’s the street food of the region. My father-in-law is...

I’ve never been a huge fan of Chicago-style deep dish pizza. That’s not to say I dislike it. I get the itch to have it every so often for variety’s sake. Work seems to take me to Chicago occasionally, so I get to scratch that itch every few years. Lately I’ve been craving a slice of the deep stuff, and to my genuine surprise there’s not a single place that serves Chicago-style deep dish pizza in Greenville, SC.
I’ve written before that there is no great...

I’m a huge fan of duck breast. It’s basically the steak of the air. Yet as ubiquitous as ducks are, processed duck is incredibly rare. I only see duck at higher end restaurants where one breast goes for about $25–$35. Cooking breasts at home isn’t much better. I’ve found one butcher shop that sells two frozen duck breasts for $35. That’s $17.50 per breast, which is better than $26 but still a little ridiculous for what it is. I can buy a whole frozen duck at the...

I’ve made this dish a million times. I think it’s based on something I saw Ina Garten prepare on TV several years ago. Every time I make it, I scramble to remember what I did last time, and what I said I’d do differently the next time. I actually wrote this down back in 2013 but didn’t remember to take pictures until this weekend.
I grew up eating the ubiquitous southern-style mac and cheese that’s swimming in butter and thickened with beaten eggs. The texture...

The wife and I have this pizza making exercise down. It used to be a big production with lots of dirty dishes, but now it’s a very casual affair.
We typically make three pizzas. It’s takes a decent amount of charcoal to get the oven going, so it makes sense to make the most of it. Although we can make the oven hotter or cooler for different styles of pizza, we’ve pretty much settled on a hybrid New York/Neapolitan dough with a NY-style sauce and a whole milk, low-moisture...

I’ve never been a bean snob. I think canned beans are incredibly convenient and consistently good. For most recipes that use beans, good is good enough. But when beans need to stand on their own, you really can’t beat dried beans on quality, and especially not on price.
There’s a Mexican restaurant chain in my region that serves great frijoles de la olla. It’s such a welcome break from the [sub]standard refried beans and rice sides that are so prevalent at strip mall...

I’ve been cooking a lot of American-style Chinese food at home lately. One of my favorite dishes to order out is Kung Pao chicken. This dish actually originates from the Sichuan province and is prepared pretty close in the US to the way it’s prepared in China. In Chinese cooking, dishes are typically very heavy on either meats or vegetables, not both like you find here. This dish is almost all chicken, but here in the US we add some bell peppers for sweetness. My recipe is a little...

I’ve been on a quest lately to reproduce Chinese take-out at home. Stir-frys and noodle dishes provide a great way to take advantage of the fresh produce in my garden and at the farmers market. I recently bought a wok and am working on my skill with fast, high heat cooking.
My new preoccupation—getting a home wok to restaurant temps. I need to make some sort of fluted charcoal chimney. pic.twitter.com/wObV0F4eK0
— Chad Chandler (@chad_chandler) June 2, 2015
The ingredients and...

For years, I smoked on a cheap, portable, charcoal grill that was a hand-me-down from my father-in-law. When I moved to my new house in 2014, I treated myself to new Weber propane and charcoal grills. Despite the new gear, I clung to my old method of building a simple two-zone fire in the kettle. The standard two-zone set-up technically worked, but it required constant temperature checks, rotating of the meat, and the addition of fuel throughout the cook. It simply wasn’t very stable or...

I know the title of this post doesn’t make a lot of sense. Stir-fry is stereotypically Chinese and adding Thai ingredients doesn’t change that. But foreign cultures group disparate foods together that they consider “American” (check out the Crown Crust Burger from Pizza Hut Middle East), so I’m going to do the same with pan-Asian foods.
I’ve been cooking a lot of Asian-inspired meals lately. My Asian market is now on my Saturday morning shopping circuit. It...

The wife and I are getting really good at pizza making. We’ve pretty much nailed NY-style pizza, so now we’re trying to perfect Neapolitan-style pizza. I can make either variety in my homemade pizza oven based on how much charcoal I use and whether or not I burn wood.
We had a low-key Easter this year, so we decided to make a few pizzas instead of the standard holiday fare. We usually make very simple Neapolitan pizzas, but we decided to get creative with flavor combinations this...